by Tim Jeal
‘Tell me,’ I heard myself plead.
‘Andrew was born seven months after we married. I worked out how long you had been away. There was no other explanation, no incubators necessary. He wasn’t premature. I suffered the jokes … you must have got at it fast. The knowing looks. Now you must understand why I have got to do what I’m planning.’ He looked at me as I turned my face to the side of my chair. ‘One day you must tell him.’
‘Go, go now.’ My voice could have been scarcely audible, for he hesitated before rising. I stayed where I was, afraid to stand, think, speak. One thought … God, how she must have hated me.
Eighteen
My self-disgust had not lasted long. I knew that I could not have given her reason enough for her action. Self-condemnation gave way to hatred for her. I wept with the bitterness of a child who had been unjustly punished. I saw the period since she had married as ten wantonly thrown-away years. She could have come to me, confided her doubts. Yet when I was away and helpless she had married another man. She had not even told him that my child was already forming in her womb. How big was it even when she said goodbye as I left for that fatal convalescence? A microscopic blob? A ping-pong ball? I remembered too how she had encouraged me to go. How it would do me good. How she wished she wasn’t a working girl. I was to write often. I wouldn’t forget, would I? And as I wrote the child grew. The time even then was drawing nearer for another man to acknowledge my child as his own. I thought of Dinah in the woods the weekend before. ‘He’s probably fallen over like you. He may have ruined his shoes. I may have to buy him another pair. He was wearing his best school suit for your friends. Did you notice that?’ Her tears. How could I have known why she was crying? The irony of her laughter as she kissed me became a parody of irony. Did I notice? I’d hardly looked at the boy. What colour were his eyes? What shirt and tie had he been wearing? Was he at a good school? Everything became different, agonisingly different. I had tried to use my own son to regain the woman who had tricked me. Had Mrs Lisle known as she saw us going to the cinema? Dinah had sent back my present to my son. The word tore in my head, like a metal hook. My anger ravaged my mind like a caged bird of prey. I did no work for days. I was tortured by dreams. Gradually my anger became a terrible numbness. I was the undertaker who had just heard that death had been abolished, the clergyman who knew that God did not exist, the man who hoped for nothing. Anything is better than not to feel, to go on living but not existing. Anything is better. I read my diary of that summer of 1957. I saw notes for the letters and postcards I had written, descriptions of places we had visited together before the operation on my ear. I tried to feel as I had felt then. To remember at least.
One evening I looked at the diary for what I felt would be the last time. What point was there? I looked at the entries I knew almost by heart. Suddenly I was aware of something else. Desperately I calculated the days. I rang up Mark and found out the date of Andrew’s birthday and wrote down all the relevant dates on the back of an envelope. I had gone into hospital for my ear operation on 2 April 1957, I had come out on 4 May of the same year. On that day I had spent the afternoon with Dinah. The following day she had seen me off at the airport. On 6 July I had returned from France. She had married Mark on 30 June 1957. Andrew had been born on 10 January 1958. I had last slept with her on 1 April 1957, the day before I went into hospital. Andrew had been born over nine months later. All Fools’ Day had been my last night with her, a savage coincidence. Was it possible that a child could be born just over two weeks late? I rang up my doctor and asked his opinion. It was possible and not unusual. Sometimes the child grew too big and a caesarian was necessary. I don’t know what I was trying to prove by these enquiries. At the time I felt that anything would be better than the child being mine. I thumbed through medical text books to try to find out more about late births. I discovered little more than I had learned from the doctor. I reasoned that if the child was not mine, there was good reason for Dinah having done what she did, even if, as Simpson claimed, she had still loved me then. A drunken evening perhaps? The man she had met could have been impossible to marry. She loved me too much to marry me and make me the father of a child that was not mine? She had been trapped into it? Raped? No. It wasn’t even remotely likely. The brief period of hope I had entertained seemed more and more ridiculous as the days passed. I found out that Andrew had been over nine pounds at birth. My wild theories must be wrong. There could be no justification for Dinah. I had tried to convince myself and failed. The facts were simple. Dinah was guilty. Andrew was definitely my child. I had destroyed ten years of my life. Simpson was asking me to love and live with a woman who had deceived me in the cruellest possible way. He was not even certain whether she would do so. I was certain that I could not accept anybody on such terms, even if they begged me. I drank a lot and cried. I decided I should rent a cottage in Wales or Cornwall. Get out of London. Walk, read … what was there for me to do? There had been a time when anything was possible, when I had been free. Yet then I had been a child. A toy was broken and another new one promised. A holiday by the sea removed the memory of a bad report at school. The cruelty of a master was escaped when holidays arrived. A new bicycle opened up a wider world. All moves could be retracted, everything forgiven, tomorrow was another day. Who can give back hope? When is a life formed? When is nothing else possible?
Nineteen
My next step was unnecessary. I knew it was going to be useless. I suppose I half persuaded myself that if I went to see the lover Dinah had taken after Mark’s illness, I might discover something else. Something that would somehow prove that nothing had been her fault. The result of such a visit could easily prove exactly the opposite. Perhaps it was just something to do. One last fact in my personal tragedy to be examined. It may have been curiosity to see if anything else could hurt me. Mark said that he didn’t see what I hoped to gain by it. But he gave me the name and address. After all, if I was going to help him, it wouldn’t do to offend me. The evening I chose was raw and foggy. Peter Campbell was not on the telephone. If he had been, I should still have gone without letting him know. How could I possibly introduce myself on the phone? He might say that he was going to be out, that he was going away indefinitely, that he wouldn’t see me.
He lived just east of Shepherd’s Bush on the top of an uncared-for semi-detached. Unruly hedge, dark hall, two prams, indeterminate-coloured linoleum on the stairs. I didn’t much care if he decided to throw me out. I should have seen him, heard him speak. If I was embarrassed it would show that my emotions were not entirely dead. I wondered if he was in bed with somebody, as I climbed the stairs. On the top landing was a sickly brown-coloured door. There were several letters stuffed into the letter-box. I pulled out one and saw his name. I knocked.
*
A man in his mid-twenties opened the door. His hair was dark and lank. He wore a dirty white shirt open at the neck. He stared at me defensively with lugubrious deep blue eyes.
‘Are you Peter Campbell?’
‘Yes. Isn’t that the way policemen always start?’ He hesitated to see if I was going to reply. I said nothing. He explained: ‘I meant the “who are you” bit.’ I nodded and then said:
‘I hope you don’t mind my coming like this quite out of the blue. I’m a friend of Dinah Simpson’s.’
He moved back a step as he heard the name.
‘I don’t feel well enough to fight.’ He sounded apologetic.
‘I’d much rather talk,’ I said reassuringly.
‘I’m busy. I’m also drunk. I haven’t seen her for months.’ He paused. ‘Three months, a quarter of a year, ninety days.’
‘I’d still like to talk to you.’
He leant against the frame of the door, unable to make up his mind to shut the door in my face. He said imploringly:
‘Can’t you talk to somebody else? Somebody somewhere’s bound to be waiting to talk to you. Some relative in hospital, some orphan in an orphanage, some telephonist on interna
tional.’ He started to shut the door. I moved forward.
‘I shall ring the bell if you shut the door.’ He opened it again. Then sighing, said:
‘Oh all right, come on in. It’s liberty hall.’
He led me along an unfurnished corridor into a room at the far end. A table covered with papers, a couple of leather arm-chairs, dark blue curtains, a gas fire. I sat down in one of the arm-chairs. On the mantelpiece was a half-finished bottle of whisky. My host sat down at the table and bent his head over the sea of paper.
‘Why on earth should I talk to you? I’ve got two hundred “A” level papers to correct. Question: Discuss the theme of age in Lear. Look at this….’ He lifted a piece of paper and waved it feebly. ‘This one tells me that Lear is a very old man, that Gloucester is even older, he supposes that Goneril is getting on, hazards a guess that Kent is in his fifties. Two hundred papers, some of them worse than this, and you ask me to talk to you.’
I looked at him more carefully. Saw the dark hairs on his wrists. There were hairs like that on my own wrists. Dinah slept with you. I looked at him as he scribbled something on the paper he had just been telling me about. I felt no emotion at all even as I said:
‘You slept with Dinah.’
He got up from his chair and walked over to the mantelpiece and his bottle. Without looking at me he replied:
‘Was that a question? Am I meant to say: “Yes, on seventy-seven separate occasions, including several continuous ones in the kitchen under the fridge?”’ He took a swig of whisky from the bottle. ‘Do you want any? I can get you a glass.’
‘Where did you meet her?’
‘You don’t want any. I met her in a pub drinking this. We talked.’ He sat down again and said in desperation: ‘Can’t you go somewhere else for vicarious sex? I haven’t got any good stories. Any dirty photographs. I’m not Casanova; I eat a lot of fish and chips, dabble in Coptic art, go south in the winter. I didn’t know she was your girl friend. She said she liked me because I didn’t know anybody she knew.’ He rested his head on the table. ‘I want to go to bed.’
‘Did you talk to her like that? I never said very much.’
‘What I said had much the same ultimate effect.’ He said this with no humour.
‘Mark Simpson said you were a cheery soul.’
He groaned at this.
‘Everybody’s giggle. Come to think of it he’s a bit of a laugh himself. There was a cripples’ parade in Whitehall last Saturday. Give cripples more money. Something like that. Wonder if he was there. Perhaps he was at that bookshop of his. Dinah’s a pretty girl to have married somebody like him.’
I said:
‘Did she ever tell you why she married him?’
‘Something about somebody called Harry.’ He looked at me uneasily. ‘Come to think of it, you didn’t tell me your name.’
‘What did she tell you about Harry?’
‘Your name’s Harry, isn’t it?’ He seemed more interested.
‘You recognise me from her description, I suppose. I looked at her cow-eyed and said very little. I expected her to say even less. Did she tell you that?’
He tugged at his long black hair as though trying to remember.
‘No, not quite that. I’m surprised she hasn’t told you herself. She could be pretty direct.’ He pointed in the direction of the gas fire as though keen to change the subject. ‘That fire isn’t too much for you?’ He jerked into a more upright position. ‘Look, we could play chess. I’ve got a set next door. The loser gets nothing, the winner gets nothing. Have you ever been to a film where they play chess for the girl? It’s generally a bit more athletic. The guy who shoots fastest, rides better, knows what he wants….’ His voice trailed off as he looked at my expression. ‘You’re not very cheerful yourself. Did you look at her like that? You’re looking at me and yet you’re not. She said you did that.’
‘Why did she stop seeing you?’
‘Because I was happy with her. It can be boring, somebody being happy. There isn’t much else to say except: I love you. Masses of nervous chatter too. My voice petering out when she didn’t laugh. She did to start with. But she’d known you and Mark first. There’s no competition against the deep and silent inner life. The arrogance of the self-sufficient.’ A month ago and I might have felt sorry for him.
‘I want you to tell me what she said about me.’
He said bitterly:
‘Why the hell should I? What do you think it’s like, loving somebody who just wants to talk about other people? I had enough of it then. Ask her, ask her husband. It must have been fun for her using me as a receptacle for the dirty linen of her domestic failure. I worked that phrase out for her. It didn’t get home. Most of the time I’d listen politely, not sympathetically. I couldn’t even get rid of you when she was in bed.’ His self-pity started to irritate me.
‘Did she ever tell you that she married somebody else when she was pregnant with my child? You haven’t got a monopoly of the world’s woe. Perhaps Mark told you that when you went to dinner. How did it go? Did she size you both up to see who was the best man?’
He got up and walked over to the door.
‘Why did you have to come? It’s annoyed you, it’s depressed me. What’s the sense in that? No, she didn’t tell me what she’d done. She may have treated you worse than she treated me. What good’s that to me? Somebody with one arm doesn’t think “What a lucky chap I am” when he sees somebody else with no arms.’
‘Do you like being a schoolmaster?’
‘I wish you’d go away. I’ve offered you whisky, I’ve been patient and polite, I’ve even suggested we play chess together. We probably have nothing in common except adultery and our sex. While you’ve been here I might have corrected three more papers. That’d come to over a pound. Now I only want to go to bed. You’ve wrecked my evening. Isn’t that enough?’
‘Did Dinah drink a lot too?’
‘Like a fish she drank, like a drain she laughed. Go away.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Go away.’
‘All right,’ I said, getting up.
Outside the fog was thicker. I fell over one of the prams in the hall.
I paused half-way down the path. I pulled a pound note out of my wallet. I hadn’t got an envelope. Instead I tore it up and dropped it on the path. Three papers made a pound. I worked out how much he got for two hundred. Once when I was ten I’d jogged the child next door to me in an art lesson. We avoided a quarrel by letting him jog me. I made my unwanted line into a hill. He made his into a fence. Guilt and punishment were easy then.
Twenty
My secretary Lotte Jameson always put flowers in my office. The place was really more hers than mine. She’d chosen the curtains and the chair covers, had even decided on white instead of black telephones. The day after I had seen Peter Campbell was the first day I had been into the office since Mark’s visit. Only four days. I spent half an hour ringing up agencies to see if I could find a house to rent in the country. Tim’s jokes about my becoming a sleeping partner were to become more bitter.
*
Shortly after eleven o’clock that morning, Lotte came in and told me a Mrs Lisle had come to see me.
When Dinah’s mother came in she looked older, less composed that I had ever seen her. Her make-up was carelessly put on. Too much powder on her forehead, too generous a helping of lipstick on her thin upper lip. I offered her a seat and waited.
She said:
‘I gather my son-in-law came to see you the other day.’
‘Yes.’
‘What did he say?’ She sounded extremely anxious.
‘Something I suspect you would never have said.’
‘I don’t want to waste your time. You must tell me.’
I looked her straight in the eye:
‘How long have you known that I was Andrew’s father?’
‘I didn’t know when she married,’ she replied without hesitating. ‘No mother recommends
her daughter to …’ She searched for the right word, then ended: ‘To do what she did.’
It didn’t matter whether I believed her or not. Even if she had agreed with Dinah, it didn’t change Dinah’s guilt. I asked:
‘What have you come to tell me?’
She seemed to be on the brink of tears.
‘That Mark has left her.’
I looked away as she began to cry. I remembered what she had done to me. I couldn’t feel anger or grief, not gain any satisfaction by thinking the wheel had come full circle, that justice had been done. My stomach contracted as I thought of what she was going to say, what she was going to ask. What Mark had asked and was now trying to force me to do. Mrs Lisle was dabbing at her eyes with a small handkerchief.
‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured. ‘I don’t usually …’ I said nothing. ‘It was a terrible shock.’
‘You never liked him after his illness. He must be a rich man. I don’t blame you for thinking he ought to have done more for her.’
She did not attempt to control the tone of bitterness in her voice as she said:
‘He’s paid the rent of the flat for three months more. She’s got no money of her own.’ She seemed to be about to add something else. I supplied it for her:
‘Then there’s the child.’
‘I can’t help her myself. Of course they can come and live with me….’
I interrupted before she could give any reasons for them not doing so.
‘Naturally they’ll be doing that.’ I could have added that it would make her life fuller. I went on: ‘If you’re worried about Andrew’s education, I will set up a trust for him.’
She looked at me imploringly.
‘Now that you know everything, is that all you are going to do? You told me that you decided to meet us again because you had forgiven.’